Town Food

With time i am beginning to realize why my Dad is always reluctant of eating food outside home. For all the time i have known him, my dad has always avoided eating outside home, sleeping outside home even when he is required to be in a conference. We used to laugh about it but at the same time feel proud of a husband and father who took family as priority. At least he set a good example. Perhaps i am following after his footsteps. But for the part of eating outside home i have failed terribly. I can excuse myself and say the set up has changed tremendously and the only way i will eat food cooked at home during the day is either i carry packed lunch or go to the house over lunch hour. I guess the manly ego restrains me from the former and the time constraint restrains me from the latter. So i am only left with the option of fasting which as a matter of fact doesn't happen daily and actually people like me are still a great assignment the Lord has to do to bring to a level where fasting will be a part of normal life. In short, i cannot help eating here and there.

So during the day, i go this way, i go that way. I eat this, i eat that. Of course i grew up in the village so my menu is not diverse. I once went to a Chinese restaurant and no sooner had i sat on the table than i left. This is because when the menu was brought, i did not understand it. I had no clue of any food on that menu and you know they do not bring samples to the table. When i was growing up in the village, i was fed with stereotypes especially on the eating habits of other cultures and the contents of their diets and of course somehow cheated that only my culture knows what real food is and how it should be taken. But modernity is slowly catching up with me and once in a while i do some adventure. I also want to have a sentence to say when i go somewhere and somebody mentions pizza, burger, mayonasse, you see. Of course this is at a risk because some bellies like mine are highly reactive and can protest at any foreign and unfamiliar matter especially if it comes without notice or premeditation.

So on Friday last week i went through what is called driving in modern terms;let the reader understand. I am still trying to trace the root cause of that explosive reaction.It was actually highly explosive and a certain small room in my house can give a testimony. If you want to know the gravity of that matter ask my sweetheart, or my sister and they will tell you that for the better part of the weekend, i abstained from food. I was not fasting. And i could not settle on the seat even while watching a very captivating movie because i was being driven externally by some fierce internal forces that were causing some cyclic imbalances within my system. A saying in my language says, "he who has a running belly seeks the bush". So seeking the crucial room was paramount.

I had to dig to the depth of that matter and try to find out what i should strike out from my menu forever. A careful and detailed analysis takes me to Wednesday lunch when a colleague asked me out for lunch. I work in Westy and you can be sure we went to a place where the menu should have been accompanied by samples and additional notes. And while i was there struggling with the menu, he said, " No need to struggle. Just replicate my choice." And he mentioned something like chips masala, two sausages and egg something. I just smiled at the waiter and said,"likewise, and some passion juice."

As we unleashed our potential, we talked about the ICC proceedings at the Hague, and whether those Kenyans had a case to answer . We wondered why the weather has changed so much to an extent that it would be cold in September. We laughed at some of the happenings that take place in our workplace. And before we could even notice, we had subdued the mountain on the table. So we went back to the office very energized. I cannot say with surety that my stomach was perfect from that time but if if felt something strange, i must have taken it lightly; after all this world is not my home. But on Friday evening, my attention was drawn to some situations within me that would begin to cause some overflows. I suspect whatever i took after Wednesday did not augur well with the foreigners in my belly and some nutritional clashes must have taken place.

I know i still don't have the courage to transport food from my house to the office and daily fasting might take a little longer to materialize. But i will hate to see a repeat of the situation i went through over the weekend. I mean, weekends are meant to be full of life and vitality and moving around for good reasons. I need to either shun new diets or have a plan to gradually introduce myself to these diets. May be start with having a piece of kebab on my githeri, or a drop of mayonasse on my rice and if no reaction takes place then these quantities can be increased progressively. I know there are still so many items i still have no idea of on those menus, like, did they call it Kolobot Chicken or something? I have never been complicated and i would rather there were simpler menus. By the way some of us prefer going to these small restaurants for that very reason; there you can tell what exactly is on the menu and the waiters there don't weng too much when they are explaining the menu.